I've been looking at my habits with my iPhone recently. All too often I found myself checking the twitter and Facebook app to see what's new in the world. Even after being out at work all day, I'd find myself picking up my phone and checking status updates to see what I'm missing. It's addictive. With the 80 people I'm following on Twitter and 50 friends on Facebook, there was always something to 'catch up on'.
And then I realised that what I was missing was spending more time doing the things I wanted to do. Like playing with the kids, or reading, or doing the writing that I always claim I don't have time to do. Twitter and Facebook rather than helping forge connections with people, was actually driving me away from those closest to me.
My solution was simple. I looked at my Facebook friends and spent 5 minutes defriending anyone that wasn't a member of my family, or a close friend. This brought my number down to 16. That's a good number. I can manage that. I can look at that list of friends and see how I might be interested in what they have to say. A great side-effect of this I hadn't thought of until I went through this exercise, was that I'm much happier to share a bit of my real uncensored thoughts on Facebook. If like me, you have a lot of colleagues in your friends list, you might be reluctant to share your true thoughts.
After sorting Facebook, Twitter was easy. I set myself the target of going from following 80, to a rather arbitrary 10. It took less than a minute.
Today, my iPhone has stayed on the mantelpiece all night. I haven't felt that compulsion to check it once. And tomorrow in the office, I can actually converse with my colleagues to find out what's going on in their lives.
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